Thursday, 29 July 2010

I’m not surprised to read that Martin Scorsese’s adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s ShUtter iSlaNd is his biggest worldwide commercial hit to date; just as the DVD is poised to be unleashed in the UK on 2nd August – as reported by Entertainment Daily –

Psychological mystery thriller, Shutter Island which earned $294 million worldwide has become top-grossing picture of Martin Scorsese’s career. Earlier, The Departed, released in 2006 was his highest grossing film. It made $290 million worldwide and still remains Scorsese’s highest-grossing movie with $132.4 million, domestically.

Shutter Island with its $127.3 million domestic won’t be able catch with The Departed on that front, even though it has made more in its first 13 weeks than Departed did. It is because Shutter Island’s run is winding down, whereas Departed received a nationwide re-launch late in its run to capitalize on Oscar nominations.

Wednesday, 28 July 2010

Congratulations!The Book Prize for Fiction has been awarded to Lesley Thomson for her crime novel A Kind of Vanishing. The result of the award was announced on 21 July 2010. The People’s Book Prize for Fiction was the brain child of the late Dame Beryl Bainbridge and is supported by the Publishers Association. A Kind of Vanishing was originally published in 2006 and tells the story of what happens to those that are left behind when a child goes missing without a trace.

Lesley Thomson is the first winner of this award and is the author of two critically acclaimed crime novels. Seven Miles from Sydney and A Kind of Vanishing

Zoë Sharp's THE CHARLIE FOX MYSTERIES, centering on ex-army self-defense expert and one time Special Forces candidate, Charlotte "Charlie" Fox and her all-action, high octane adventures in the world of close protection, to Twentieth Century Fox TV, by Alan Nevins at Renaissance Literary & Talent on behalf of Jane Gregory at Gregory & Company.

Sharp’s latest Fourth Day is out from Allison and Busby and you can read Chapter One here

And more film news, as Daniel Craig has confirmed that he will star as Mikael Blomkvist in the Hollywood adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO as reported by Deadline.com –

Daniel Craig has closed his deal to play journalist Mikael Blomkvist in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, a deal which factors in options for two sequels based on The Girl Who Played With Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets' Nest. The novels comprise the bestselling trilogy by late Stieg Larsson.

Deadline told you first about the Craig talks, which back in June were hardly a certainty, because there were so many hurdles to jump. I'm told that with a whole lot of juggling between three studios, Craig will be able to make the movies. Essentially, he will begin work on the first film in Sweden, as soon as he removes his cowboy hat from shooting Cowboys and Aliens in the early fall. Scheduling was coordinated between Dragon Tattoo-maker Sony Pictures Entertainment, DreamWorks partners Stacey Snider and Steven Spielberg--who were flexible on the Cowboys and Aliens schedule--and James Bond rights holders Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson. The latter situation was tougher because of the uncertainty over when the next Bond film will get made--probably with Sam Mendes directing--because of MGM's paralysis. CAA made Craig's deal.

This puts Craig in a position no previous James Bond ever was in. He's got two certain franchises between Bond and the Larsson books, and possibly another in Cowboys and Aliens, which he stars in with Harrison Ford, and for which Craig has an option on a second picture. Comic-Con crowds responded glowingly to footage shown by director Jon Favreau.

Benedict Cumberbatch as action heroThe casting is even Holmesian in its astuteness. Benedict Cumberbatch has heavy dramatic roles on his CV – Hawking, Stuart: A Life Backwards – but here he’s a fine action hero, with the required disdain, charisma and energy.

Meanwhile, Martin Freeman leaves The Office firmly behind as Dr Watson. He is by turns touching and funny playing second fiddle to the famous violinist cum ‘consulting detective’. He steals quite a few scenes as the nonplussed companion, often irked by Holmes’ bloody annoying smart-alecness. Una Stubbs is irresistible as the mumsy landlady Mrs Hudson.

A Study in Pink is the first of three 90-minute films. This opener, written by Steven Moffat (moonlighting from his day job as showrunner for Doctor Who), echoes Holmes’ first adventure, published in 1887, A Study in Scarlet.

Rupert Graves as LestradeSo we see Watson returning home broken by soldierly duty in Afghanistan, as in the original, and being introduced to the friendless genius Holmes, who is looking for a flatmate.

Watson is of course irritated and dazzled by his new chum’s presumptuousness, but they bond when Holmes is called upon by DI Lestrade (Rupert Graves), who is stumped – ‘The police are always out of their depth,’ says our hero – by three serial suicides.

Of the crime’s unravelling I can reveal nothing for fear of ruining the fun for viewers (and fear of being slipped Devil’s-Foot Root poison by someone from the Society).

Holmes’ website – The Science of DeductionBut of the update it’s safe to say Moffat and Gatiss (a star and writer of Doctor Who and The League of Gentlemen) were right to think that Holmes could survive without Hansom carriages and London fog if the essential dash of the stories and characters was preserved.

What they’ve cut is the deerstalker, the pipe smoking and the drug taking, which Gatiss points out was always less important than the sheer humour in the adventures. Updates include Holmes having his own website, logically enough The Science of Deduction.

So it’s safe to deduce that Conan Doyles’ detective was always too good to be tied down by period features. He’s survived German versions, Second World War escapades (Sherlock Holmes in Washington, 1943), and most recently Guy Ritchie (not too shabby an effort by the mockney director, as it happens).

007-influenced ScoreAnd of course the creators had the example of other recent and very successful updates of classics such as Clueless and Casino Royale. With inspired direction by Paul McGuigan (Lucky Number Slevin, Gangster No.1) and a sweeping acoustic score (I spotted 007 composer David Arnold on the credits), Sherlock can now join the club.

After the screening, I nabbed 10 minutes with Steven Moffat and asked him how big a challenge it is to be putting brilliant words into the mouth of a genius who never says a dull thing.

‘Is it a challenge,’ he told me, ‘although I’ve got more notice than Sherlock has. He has to do it in real time and I can take several days. That’s where I make up the shortfall between my intelligence and his.

Holmes’ Deductions‘Yes, he must always be clever and that’s one of things we’ve set ourselves, Mark and I. We’re very strict about this. In the original stories Doyle does start to get a wee bit lazy about the deductions, and later on he hardly makes any. And we’ve said, look we’re just going to have to think and think and think of stuff you can credibly do. When I was a kid that was the element that absolutely transfixed me. And I got disappointed – “I see you’ve come from Bristol, you’ve got a train ticket.” Come on, Sir Arthur, we want better than that.

‘So we all go around suggesting deductions to each other, Steve Thompson as well [Thompson has written episode three; Gatiss episode two]. My wife even came up with a brilliant one about how to deduce that someone is left-handed. So we’ve got a bank of deductions and if we get stuck we say, here have this one. We did lift some from the books. The one about the mobile phone [in Study in Pink] is quite close to the deductions about the pocket watch in The Sign of Four. I always thought that was an incredibly beautifully written sequence, so I borrowed that one blatantly and with great joy.’

Sherlock Holmes and Doctor WhoMoffat made some interesting points about the connections between Holmes and Doctor Who. ‘They get it wrong at the very, very beginning of Doctor Who. The Doctor isn’t the hero, he’s a senile old man, a git, he’s not very nice. And [story editor] David Whitaker says, Look, this isn’t working. And I believe there’s a memo where he says let’s make him make him more like Sherlock Holmes, let’s make him a genius, difficult but a genius.‘So Doctor Who is deliberately patterned on Sherlock Holmes. When people ask me for a comparison I always find myself saying a very odd thing, which is that the Doctor is more human. By which I mean that he is like an angle who aspires to be human, whereas Holmes is a human who aspires to be a god. So the very things the Doctor admires and embraces, the silliness, lovability and huge emotions, are exactly the things Holmes is running away from.’

‘So Long as It Doesn’t Kill Me’Of his workload writing six Doctor Whos, including the Christmas special, and working on Sherlock, Moffat said, ‘There is no way of balancing this. The last year has been extraordinary. I’ve had about four days off since Christmas. I work every weekend, get up early in the morning, go to bed late at night. It’s extraordinary, but it’s great fun too – so long as it doesn’t kill me.’

For pizzazz and verve, Sherlock will surely be one of the best TV crime-dramas of the year, if not the best. Who needs the CSI professional army of experts when you’ve got a British amateur genius like the man at 221b Baker Street? The game is afoot (or ‘on,’ as Holmes says in 2010).

Crime hounds who haven’t sniffed out BBC Radio 7 yet should investigate the channel immediately.

It’s a fascinating realm of great detective dramas and classic crime shows. Recently there’s been a pretty good serialisation of John Harvey’s Inspector Resnick: Wasted Years. Coming up in August is Ruth Rendell’s The Fever Tree and Other Stories (Saturday, 7 August, 11.30pm) and a whole week of PD James’ stories to mark the author’s 90th birthday, including Adam Dalgliesh – Devices and Desires (Saturday, 7 August, 11pm) and A Taste for Death (Monday, 9 August, 11am). The highlight of this week is an exclusive interview with the grande dame of detective fiction (keep an eye out for its broadcast time).

With podcasts and iPlayer it’s easier than ever to dip in at your convenience. Give the channel the once over here.

Forewarned is forearmed

Lewis recently did so well for ITV1 that they’ve just commissioned another four episodes with Kevin Whately and Laurence Fox. It’s hard to argue with nine-million viewers for the last series, but it still leaves me cold, having a bland, primetime cop-show-by-numbers feel to it.

Author Colin Dexter, who created the Bafta-winning Inspector Morse, from which this was spun, will still be consulted for the Lewis episodes, but the new shows lack the original’s depth and air of remorse (sorry about the pun).

Garrow’s LawThe Beeb has just started filming a second series of Garrow’s Law, the intriguing drama based on real legal cases from the late 18th century. It stars Andrew Buchan, Alun Armstrong and Rupert Graves and was a fascinating look at the life and times of pioneering barrister William Garrow and some very dodgy legal practices at a time when the Old Bailey was something of a judicial circus.

The Shadow LineChristopher Eccleston has also started filming The Shadow Line for Auntie on the Isle of Man, in which he plays a drug baron. This is a six-part ‘noir thriller’ charting the impact of an underworld figure on a variety of characters. Also starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Sir Antony Sher, Stephen Rea, Rafe Spall, Kierston Wareing and Lesley Sharp.

Written, produced and directed by Hugo Blick (Marion & Geoff). So no pressure on him, then.

Top BoyC4 is also riding the crime wave with Top Boy, written by Ronan Bennett (who penned the film Public Enemies), about young gang members in East London. This four-parter follows Dushane, a 19-year-old street thug with ambitions of becoming a dealer, and is based on first-hand research by Bennett and story consultant Gerry Jackson, both Hackney residents. Cast yet to be confirmed, but it sounds like one to watch out for.

And the 2010 Theakstons Old Peculier Award goes to..... R J Ellory with his novel A Simple Act of Violence.

The winner was decided by combining the result of a public vote with the votes of a panel of expert judges: Jenni Murray, BBC Radio 4 broadcaster and author; John Dugdale, Guardian Associate Media Editor; Natalie Haynes, comedian and journalist; and Simon Theakston, Executive Director of T&R Theakston Ltd.

Monday, 19 July 2010

The Shots Editors, Mike Stotter and Ali Karim were kindly invited to lunch thanks to MIDAS PR and MIRA Books to celebrate the launch of Paul Johnston’s MAPS OF HELL and the UK debut of J T Ellison’s ALL THE PRETTY GIRLS. Joining the celebration were UK Critics Henry Sutton [Books editor for The Mirror], Mike Carlson, Peter Guttridge [The Observer] and Jake Kerridge [The Telegraph], as well as booksellers and the team from MIRA Publishing headed by Oliver Rhodes.

MIRA / MIDAS had booked a private room at The Luxe in East London, a mere stones throw from Whitechapel where J T Ellison was amused to learn that Jack the Ripper operated. Considering the darkness that lies between the pages of both these terrific crime novels, a more apt location for lunch would be hard to find.

We’ve enjoyed Paul Johnstone’s Matt Wells thrillers, which are violent looks into the unhinged. Paul is an accomplished writer, who I first discovered with his Future / Noir series featuring Quint Dalrymple. MAPS OF HELL is the third novel featuring Johnston’s alter-ego Matt Wells –Crime writer Matt Wells could never have conjured a plot this twisted. A secret Nazi-style militia running brainwashing experiments in a remote location in the States have held him prisoner. He knows they have been feeding him instructions – but why?

Tortured by maddening snatches of a life he can’t trust as his own – including a mysterious blonde woman who he feels he should remember – Matt escapes from his kidnappers in a desperate attempt to discover who he is. When a series of sadistic murders puts Matt in the frame and on the run from the FBI, Matt must expose this fiendish organisation – before events reach their terrifying conclusion.

When a local girl falls prey to a sadistic serial killer, Nashville homicide lieutenant Taylor Jackson and her lover, FBI profiler Dr. John Baldwin, find themselves in a joint investigation pursuing a vicious murderer. The Southern Strangler is slaughtering his way through the Southeast, leaving a gruesome memento at each crime scene—the prior victim’s severed hand. Ambitious TV reporter Whitney Connolly is certain the Southern

Strangler is her ticket out of Nashville; she’s got a scoop that could break the case. She has no idea how close to this story she really is—or what it will cost her. As the killer spirals out of control, everyone involved must face a horrible truth—that the purest evil is born of private lies.

Needless to say both these novels from MIRA are highly recommended if you like your crime fiction to take you to the darkest edges of the imagination.

After lunch we headed in the car to Cambridge for the annual Bodies in the Bookstore event at Heffers to meet up with Ayo Onatade and our colleagues to celebrate the crime fiction genre – click here for photos of that event.

Saturday, 17 July 2010

The 2010 ITW Thriller Awards have been announced. The winners were announced on July 10 during the 5th annual Thrillerfest Festival which took place in New York at Manhattan’s Grand Hyatt Hotel

Best Hard Cover Novel: The Neighbor by Lisa Gardner (Random House)Best Paperback Original: The Coldest Mile by Tom Piccirilli (Random House)Best First Novel:Running from the Devil by Jamie Freveletti (Harper Collins)Best Short Story: A Stab in the Heart by Twist Phelan (Ellery Queen Magazine)

A full list of the nominees can be found here.Ken Follett was awarded ThrillerMaster in recognition of his legendary career and outstanding contributions to the thriller genre. Ken Follett was presented with the award by last year’s winner, David Morrell.

Mark Bowden (Blackhawk Down) was awarded the True Thriller AwardLinda Fairstein was awarded the Silver Bullet AwardUS Airways was given the Silver Bullet Award (Corporate)Congratulations to all the winners!

According to The Bookseller Julia Wisdom at Harper Collins has seen off 4 other publishers in a heated auction to nab a conspiracy trilogy called Sanctus by Simon Toyne.

With all this spy swapping going on there is an excellent article in the Guardian from John Le Carré where he talks about the recent swaps done between the USA and Russia. Stephen King has added another award to his collection. He was recently awarded a 2009 Shirley Jackson Award for his novelette Morality which was published in Esquire. The winners were announced on Sunday, July 11th 2010, at Readercon 21, Conference on Imaginative Literature, in Burlington, Massachusetts. A full list of the winners and nominees can be found here.

The Steig Larsson saga continues to run and run. According to an article in the Guardian the fourth book was due to be set in the remote part of Canada. The article by Alison Flood can be found here. John-Henri Holmberg revealed to The Associated Press that he had received an email by the late author shortly before his death in November 2004.

For those of you not yet fed up with Dan Brown, it appears that when the paperback version of The Lost Symbol is released on 22 July that it will (hopefully) according to Transworld Publishers (via The Bookseller) dominate Summer reading. Capitalising on its success there will also be an enhanced ebook and illustrated version in time for the Christmas rush.

At the recent Ways with Word Festival in Devon, (which is currently running from 9 to 19 July) crime writer P D James explains to the Daily Telegraph the enduring appeal of detective fiction.

Egmont Press have acquired American author Jessica Warman. Her novel Pretty Deadly, is (according to the press release via book trade) a truly thrilling murder mystery story. It has been described as a cross between The Lovely Bones and Lynda La Plante and has been written for the Young Adult market.

According to The Bookseller Catnip have acquired the world rights to a debut teen thriller novel for teenagers by Colin Mulhern. The novel Clash pits the lives of two different characters one an underground cage-fighting champion and the other a talented artist together.

According to The BigMoney.com blogJanet Evanovich is not leaving St Martin's Press her long time publishers as alleged by Deadline.com. The originally article by Deadline.com can be found here. Evanovich has said that the article in Deadline.com is inaccurate! Further information can be found in an article in Forbes

According to Bookbrunch Simon & Schuster have acquired Taboo the debut novel by Casey Hill. It is said to be "a terrifying transatlantic forensic thriller".

The Strand Awards were given out on 7 July at an invitation only ceremony in New York. The winners were -Best Novel - Nine Dragons by Michael ConnellyBest First Novel – Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell and Starvation Lake by Bryan Gruley.Lifetime Achievement Award –Elmore Leonard. Elmore Leonard was presented with his award by Otto Penzler. A full list of the nominees can be found here.

NPR.org are inviting readers to vote for their favourite top 100 thrillers in their Killer Thriller contest, which can be found here. The list was whittled down from a massive 600 nominations to a manageable 182. Everyone gets 10 votes!

US readers will be pleased to hear that the paperback deal for Camilla Lackberg's series (translated by Steven Murray)has been agreed according to Publishers Weekly. The full article can be found here. Here in the UK the paperback edition of The Stonecutter will be released in March 2011 along with the hardback release of The Gallows Bird.

Friday, 16 July 2010

The evening of Thursday 15 July was the date for the 2010 Bodies in the Bookshop organised by the brilliant Richard Reynolds at Heffers Bookshop in Cambridge. As can be expected there were a large number of authors who spent their time talking to readers/fans and signing books. Here are some of the pictures from the event!

Tuesday, 13 July 2010

Mexican author Juan Hernandez Luna, who twice won the Dashiell Hammett crime-novel prize for his books has died of kidney failure. He won the Dashiell Hammett prize in 1997 and 2007 for the detective novels Tabaco para el Puma (Tobacco for the Puma) and Cadaver de Ciudad (City Corpse).

City Corpse is a dark tale of the underworld of Mexico federal district concessions seasoned with magic realism and pseudo-religious fantasy

His reputation as a detective fiction writer however did not start until 1991 when he wrote Naufragio (Shipwrecked). This was followed by Quizás otros labios (Perhaps other Lips) in 1994,

In Quizás otros labios Enrique Mejia, known as The Crow, is at a low point--his girlfriend has finally left him for good. Together with a painter in search of his past, he shares more than loneliness: they both witnessed a murder during a carnival in Puebla. The secrets hidden inside an image of James Dean put their lives at risk as they try to find out who is following them, and why.

1n 1996 he wrote Tabaco para el Puma (Tobacco for the puma) and Tijuana Dream in 1998. In 2006 he wrote Yodo (Iodine). In Yodo on the outskirts of a corrupt city lives a serial killer covered in tattoos and with no fear of the light of day. In his home he hides morbid secrets--bones, blood, and other souvenirs--that keep him in a perpetual state of euphoria, passion, and tears. His comfort: butchering dozens of chickens and returning to the permanent shadow of the world in which he lives, where money laundering and treason are typical ways to start the day.

He also contributed a short story Bang to Akashic Books excellent Mexico City Noir.

Thursday, 8 July 2010

Thriller writer Gayle Lynds believes that one should not make fun of villains. During the Craftfest portion of Thrillerfest 2010, novelist Gayle Lynds outlined "Nine Secrets to Writing Bestselling Thrillers." The article from Galleycat can be found here.

An excellent article in the Irish Times by Declan Burke where he talks about how the world became one big crime scene.

According to the Daily Telegraph, crime writer Ruth Rendell believes that TV violence is corrupting young people. The Daily Telegraph article can be found here

Book2Book reveal that, Hodder have signed up a former commander of special branch Roger Pearce to write two thrillers. The first book is entitled Sentinel. The article can be found here

According to Variety English "thespians" Ralph Fiennes, Colin Firth, Gary Oldman and Michael Fassbender have joined the cast of the film version Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

Quercus have bought the new Stef Penny novel. The novel, The Invisible Ones is her second novel after her runaway best seller and 2006 Costa Award Winning Novel The Tenderness of Wolves which was also published by Quercus. The novel also won the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award. The article from the Bookseller can be found here.

Former Dr Who star Christopher Ecclestone is due to play a drug lord in a forthcoming BBC Thriller The Shadow Line. The six-part "noir thriller" looks at the impact of an underworld figure on a wide range of characters. More information can be found here.

Wednesday, 7 July 2010

The Shots Gang are very happy when one of our contributors breaks out, which is exactly what Journalist Tony Black has done with his pitch black Gus Dury Detective series, now with the latest ‘Long Time Dead’ out shortly.

The shortlist of eight books was whittled down from twenty. Voting is now open to all.

According to the Bookseller, Harvill Secker have launched a sight for international writing. The site www.International writing.co.uk will focus on Harvill Secker titles and include books published by other Random House imprints. However the publisher has said it aimed to be as wide-ranging as possible. More information can be found here.

Channel 4 have commissioned Top Boy an East London based crime thriller about a gang of youths based in Hackney.

Thursday, 1 July 2010

According to Galleycat – Karin Slaughter has agreed a deal to option her Martin Misunderstood novella into a film. Martin Misunderstood was only released as an audio book in the US. More information can be found here.

According Variety.com the television channel Bravo have bought the exclusive UK rights to the remake of the iconic seventies television series Hawaii Five-O. The article from Variety.com can be found here. This will be sad news for those who do not subscribe to cable or Sky.

Fans of the Harry Potter films will be pleased to note that the official trailer for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows has been released. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows has been split into two films and will be darker than its predecessors. Part one will be released in November 2010 with part two in July 2011.

Tommy Lee Jones has joined the cast of Captain America: The First Avenger" as U.S. Army Colonel Chester Phillips. More information can be found here.

With Peter Temple recently winning the Miles Franklin Award, former Chair of the Booker Prize John Sutherland talks to Guardian journalist Alison Flood about whether or not a crime novel could ever win the Booker Prize. The Guardian Article can be found here. Sutherland doesn’t think so and rather sadly neither do I. But I would also like to think why not and hope that it might happen someday, sooner rather than later!

According to an article in The Australian, crime does indeed pay and a number of authors are making a mint as a result of it. The complete article can be found here. According to Australian Nielsen Book Scan it is not uncommon for there to be at least 5 thrillers in the top ten fiction list. At the time the article was written these included Lee Child, James Patterson, Harlan Coben and of course, still dominating, Swedish author Stieg’s Larsson’s three Millennium thrillers.

According to the Guardian English actor Gary Oldman is tipped to play John Le Carré's cold war hero George Smiley in Tomas Alfredson remake of the cold war thriller Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. It will be a big screen version of the classic 1979 BBC series which starred Alec Guinness.

According to the New York Times, the Stieg Larsson effect is infectious and publishers are on the look out for more Nordic noir authors to publish. The full article can be found here and here.

China Miéville has added another accolade to his ever growing list. His novel The City & The City won the 2010 Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel. The full list of winners can be found here.